Let's go green + epiphany

Wow, I'm getting way too into this. Last night I woke up in the middle of the night with an epiphany. Braided hose is braided over something. If you don't braid the wire over something, the braid should be ultra flexible and open up...allowing you to put a wire inside. This would make using braided hose on the model way easier, because I wouldn't have to mate the hose with a pipe. I would just put the pipe inside the braided hose.

Time to test the theory:

Here is the hose, I'm going to sharpen a toothpick and use it to open it up


So here we go, sharpening up the toothpick with a razor blade


Open that hose right up...


And slide the flexible metal rod inside. Yeah, it worked. This is huge. I don't know if this is what Detail Master intended for these products, but I'm going to declare this brilliant. It will make the braided hose posable, and I'll be able to slip fittings right onto the rod making for an ultra clean build.


After applying Bare Metal Foil to the heat shields on the undertray, the top side of the undertray is now complete.


I did a quick test fit to see if I needed to do any touchup on the undertray.


Here we've got the back of the gearbox. On the far left is the spot where a starter would be inserted. The real gearbox has a hole here with a visible gear. I'm going to open this hole up.


I painted the suspension mounting points.


Now we're really getting somewhere. Here I have the lower wishbone attached to the gearbox. I opened up the starter engagement point and applied a bit of Bare Metal Foil Matte Aluminum to emulate a machined mating surface.


Here we can see the lower wishbones attached. Not the big gap this leaves in the bottom of the gearbox.


Let's go green!


A major milestone, I'm done priming and moving on to green.


Painted white on the wings as well.


Total: 97.5 h